Like, seriously, this. “Vote for me and I’ll help make laws that you like!”
This is literally what democracy is supposed to be doing. If this was what Trump was actually doing here, it might be the first time he’s just followed regular principles of politics.
Maybe it’s just my lemmy app (jerboa ftw) but I like how your post got read as a markdown list item, like this is the 27th thing you had to say on the topic but the other 26 got deleted.
It’s not illegal to sell bibles. I’m sure there are loads of churches that will fill their pews with them, but they’re not sending money to the campaign, they’re sending it to Trump. Why would he make this harder for himself, he can just take the money and put it in his pocket, there’s no reason to get the campaign involved.
For real. Trump is an idiot, a grifter, and a piece of shit, but this isn’t even sidestepping campaign donation law.
He’s not a political candidate getting funds from churches, he’s a parasite capitalist selling bibles to his fans, and he’s a political candidate – 2 separate things. The bible money isn’t going to his campaign, it’s just going to his pocket.
This take assumes that he’s selling bibles, funneling the money from their sales to his campaign, then funneling it back out to pay for his disgorgements. This take thinks he’s intentionally making is harder for himself, just to make it illegal.
He’s just a guy selling shit.
I did realize that was you… You got a phone number or something?
Yeah, the Serenity Prayer context might help.
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference
You’re being downvoted because people people think you’re being obtuse, but, as a person that overuses logical thinking to a diagnosable degree, my suspicion is that you’re doing that. Also because your tone is kind of…not good.
The whole point of the Serenity Prayer (“accept the things I cannot change”) is that it includes “change the things I can” – so the things Davis is changing are things she CAN change, by definition.
But her point is that she is reframing what she believes she can and cannot change. Recategorizing, if you will.
She’s invoking the third part of the Serenity Prayer: the wisdom to know the difference. As we grow and learn, our wisdom increases, so the things that belong in the first two categories will shift.
Things that used to be things that can’t be changed are becoming things that she can.
To understand the quote, you just have to give it some space to breathe, and not be so logical about it.
I’m not sure it was ever accurate for people who weren’t already conservative.
It makes a lot more sense that, as you get older, you stop growing and learning, so as society progresses, your formerly progressive views become commonplace and eventually anachronistic.
(That’s 100% what happened to my mother, who was a hippie, literally flowers in her hair, and now “just doesn’t really get the whole trans thing”)
And, if a person was progressive, but had some secret conservative or regressive values, those values come into sharper relief when their other views become commonplace – and, as you get older, you’re less interested in hiding your flaws and/or shameful values, so they come out more.
(That’s what happened with my dad, he was in folk music groups in the 70s and then became a doctor and didn’t like the idea of poor people getting some of his money (even though it was those same programs that kept his mother afloat after his father didn’t come back from Korea).)
Person doesn’t want to date person with OF
Person with OF doesn’t want to date person
It seems the universe is in harmony.
Yeah I’m kind of dumb like that. But honestly I don’t actually do it for them – I do it for noobs. Like, there’s a long way for that person to go before my input will be helpful – but there are young people who have heard those arguments and may not have a compelling response – so hopefully my post will help.
Why can’t they just flip burgers from the age of 16 till 65? What if they don’t mind the work, they have a full and fulfilling life outside of work, and their job is just what they do to make ends meet? Does that mean they deserve to live in debt and working 100 hours a week? Are you so ignorant that you don’t understand that, in any economic system, capitalism or otherwise, not everyone can move up?
It’s literally not possible. There have to be people flipping the burgers. That’s a fact of the system; there’s no way around that. And it’s ok – not perfect, but acceptable – as long as we treat those people with dignity and respect.
And that means paying them enough to survive – and thrive – on 40 hours a week. No one’s saying they should have enough money to buy megayachts – or even regular yachts. But they should be able to buy a shitty canoe – and still be able to pay all their bills, and not have to work more than 40 hours.
If you’re concerned about the possibility that, if they earn more, you’ll earn less, that’s just not true. There’s no scenario in the USA where a company is charging customers any less than the most they possibly can, and paying their workers any more than as little as possible. That’s literally the law. There is plenty of extra money that can be used to cover the needs of our poorest people – and to raise the salaries of more scarce labor who would otherwise turn to flipping burgers if burger-flipping salaries went up.
Literally every business that’s even a little successful has extra money. (“Extra money” is also known as profit.) There is no reason why one person should have to work more than 40 hours a week while another person has more money then they can possibly spend in a lifetime; it’s illogical and irrational, and cruel.
If everyone who flips burgers gets a “better job” are you going to stop having burgers?
The issue is that while there is work that needs to be done, then there will be a need to pay people to do it. If you’re a business owner and you have work that needs to be done, and you can’t afford to pay your employees enough for them to pay their bills and lube decent lives, and you can’t personally take the hit to your own income to cover the difference, then your business should fail.
Right now, the arrangement forces people to work more than 40 hours a week – which is illegal, but companies get away with it because they don’t work at the same company for the whole time. In fact, many people with multiple jobs don’t even have full time jobs – they have 3 part time jobs, all working them less than 40 hours a week, so they don’t have to give them the benefits they’re required to provide for full time employees.
(Personally, when I was young I had multiple places scheduling me for 39.5 hours a week. Now I’m a white collar FTE and I work 35 hours a week.)
So, next time you call someone who’s flipping burgers “lazy,” think about how lazy a person must be to work 100 hours a week. Is that what laziness looks like to you? How many hours a week do you have to work too not be considered not lazy?
Because, the thing is, you know they aren’t lacy. They’re working their fingers to the bone, and have much shittier and shorter lives than middle class people. Calling them lazy (or stupid or unlucky or whatever) is how you rationalize the fact that you’re unwilling to accept any inconvenience it might cause you to help them.
In this scenario – aka, the real world, the world we are in right now – they are working harder than the rest of us are, for less money.
WE GOT BALLISTAE FOR YOU TOO, BUDDY
Where’s the button I can press to project this comment onto the moon
One of the things that I thought of to help with this problem is, like, what if we figured out how much it costs to meet like all the basics in life - a house (not a rental!), food, soda, internet, heat/hot water - all that stuff. Then add some more, so that people could do nice stuff and enjoy their lives, save for retirement, go on vacations, etc.
Then - now here’s the crazy part - we make a law requiring that everyone in the country needs to be paid at least that much money. It would be like a “Floor Wage,” or, like, a “Minimum Salary.”
If the increase in the cost of doing business didn’t eliminate billionaires altogether, I bet people would at least stop giving a shit about billionaires and their gold piles because the rest of us aren’t living in debt while they build yachts for their yachts.
I just wrote like a 10 page response to another comment on that same post I made so I don’t think I have the energy to go too deep on this - so, to keep it short:
I was just rebutting that person’s claim that a car and a digital object have the same relationship to value, and they don’t; physicality requires resources that “digitality” doesn’t.
I feel like you might’ve agreed with me in the second part? Or, if not, I think you managed to destabilize the entire data economy in like 2 sentences, so, fuck yeah.
First off, I was specifically addressing your concern about the car & it’s physicality. Value of physical objects is directly related to the scarcity of the resources; digital content pricing is skeuomorphic (sp?) at best and absolute bullshit at worst.
Surely the sale of that copy of the movie has value
Secondly (and thirdly in a sec), this is the fundamental misapprehension that surrounds piracy. Each instance of piracy does not mean one lost sale. In terms of music (I read a study about music piracy a few years ago), this is rarely the case, and in fact, it was the opposite: the study found that the albums that were pirated more resulted in more sales, since the album’s reach was extended.
Thirdly, one of the core issues with the entertainment industry at the moment is that the streaming services have no way to gauge the draw of a specific show, movie, or song, since subscribers just don’t approach their subscription that way - you don’t subscribe to Spotify because your want to hear Virtual Cold by Polvo; you subscribe because you want to have access to their entire collection, as well as all the other awesome 90s noise/math rock - even though, let’s be honest, you really just listen to Virtual Cold over and over.
As a result of this clusterfuck, streaming services can’t correctly apportion payment to their content - they do an elaborate split of the profits. So - the best way for the “content providers” (ie copyright holders) to increase profits is to reduce the amount of content on the streaming service - so the profits are spread over fewer titles.
This is massively hurting the production companies - please note none of these fuckers are getting any sympathy from me, this is just an explanation - they’re having a hard time finding a balance between how much they can spend given that half of their productions’ profits are pennies. (Oops, forgot one element: because of streaming tech, no one buys films in tape or DVD or whatever - which was half of a film’s profit.) Do they make a bunch of huge budget action movie sequels that fill the theater seats? Or do they make smaller-budget films with smaller profit margins?
It’s a shitty situation, and I don’t know what the answer is - but I know that the answer isn’t whatever the fuck this is. And, until they figure their shit out, I’m just going to step outside the market for a bit.
I’m not living in some dream world where piracy doesn’t reduce profits. I know that the underground bands that I like are usually supportive of piracy because it helps them more than it hurts - and when it comes to film and TV, when those companies complain about piracy , it’s just like those bullshit shoplifting claims - attempts to turn their “line not go up” on poor people. Piracy is a grain of sand in the Sahara - they have way bigger problems than that - though I do think increased piracy metrics might help encourage them in the right direction.
Anyway, if you got this far, I appreciate your time.
It’s got nothing to do with whether it’s physical. Cars are different from movies because the movie can be reproduced infinitely without resource cost (or, very minimal). If you steal a rental car, they have to buy a new one. If you pirate a movie, they haven’t lost anything.
The idea is sound but for most places I’ve heard of (ie in my city), condos just pay a management company to do all the landlord stuff, so even as an owner, I still have to call some crabby woman when the roofers drilled a hole in my A/C and fight with her – and then also fight with the roofers – to get it fixed